MEET THE AUTHOR

GEORGINA LAWTON explores her experiences growing up as a black daughter of white parents in her new memoir Raceless

What was it like writing a book discussing such a personal topic?

It was difficult. I went through a range of emotions at the beginning. I felt relief at getting stuff out there that had been suppressed for so long, and as other people reached out to me I felt that my experiences were legitimised and validated. But then I also felt a lot of fear, a lot of dread, because I was writing about things that I’d never spoken to my family about, so I was worried about rejection or further isolation. It was definitely difficult at times for my mum and some of my extended family, but they’ve got used to it and they’ve been supportive.

You say in the book, “Race is real, simply because we have attributed meaning to it.”

We now know as a society that there’s no genetic basis for the concept of race; it was something that we’ve invented in order to divide and conquer. The idea of racial superiority came from white colonialists who tried to assert that black people were inferior. Our phenotype – skin colour, hair colour, eye shape – has been given so much meaning, and it’s been used to justify entire racial categories and entire personal characteristics, but there’s no genetic basis for that. We just know that race is real because we have attributed so much meaning to it over the past 300 years or so.

What were the pros and cons of using DNA testing to find out more about your identity?

I think it’s incredibly useful when you’re trying to piece together your family history. But these companies also offer tests promising to tell you more about your race or your ethnicity, and those two terms are misused on those sites, and misused in society. Ethnicity just relates to things that you can change like your cultural background, your religious affiliation and your language, but a lot of these companies promise to tell your ethnic makeup. What they’re really doing is saying, “Oh, we can tell you your racial group.” There’s no genetic basis for the idea of racial categories, so what they’re doing is selling you this idea that’s not scientifically sound.

They can tell you where you’re from on a continental basis – they told me that I have African ancestry, which I’ve never been able to confirm – but when they’re saying you’re 35 per cent German, or 25 per cent Nigerian, what they’re really saying is, “We have looked in the database, and we can see that in the database a lot of you have these genetic similarities.” I was told when I first took a test that I was Nigerian, and then it changed to Benin and Togo because the database updated, and then it changed back to Nigeria again. So trying to find a cultural affiliation with these places is problematic as the databases get updated.